Were the classes the biggest mistake in BfA?

[Shakana]

They could always invalidate it all with time travel or letting us wake up from an old god nightmare. Not exactly great tools, but nothing is "unfixable". It's just a matter of how far you wanna take it.

@Nathasil @Haidaes good prospective. It can be fixed but my concern is if they fix it too late? Horde as a faction since we-they got Garrosh that has only decay as a faction, is this hate towards the horde? Do they feel the forsaken don't belong on the horde because of the way they are? But what are they trying to do after years and years with forsaken on horde's side? Removing them? I just simply don't understand what's all this for.

[MrLachyG]

I think the biggest mistake for class design was the removal of the legendaries and the artifact weapons. those two things were removed with the addition of the azerite system. so essentially you lost one powerful ability, plus 15ish game changing passives for a grand total of 4 passives, 5 when BoD hit.

what they should've done was simple: added talent rows in for 110 and 120. it might not have completely filled the hole that losing the leggos and artifact weapons left but it would've done something

[Cosmic Janitor]

@Nathasil @Haidaes good prospective. It can be fixed but my concern is if they fix it too late? Horde as a faction since we-they got Garrosh that has only decay as a faction, is this hate towards the horde? Do they feel the forsaken don't belong on the horde because of the way they are? But what are they trying to do after years and years with forsaken on horde's side? Removing them? I just simply don't understand what's all this for.

The problem is that Blizzard always tried to do 2 things with the Horde since they started WoW: On one hand they want them to be the noble savages, the underdogs. On the other hand they also want the horde to be a cheap warhammer orc knock-off that runns of testosterone for the guys which are insecure about their masculinity. The issue here is that WoW is not swotor where every character has their own story choices. On the contrary, everyone is railroaded by the overall plot, so either the noble savages are forced to pretend they went temporarily insane and just happily slaughtered children or the guys that think orcs should rape and pillage every race are forced to work alongside the "evil" pansies of the alliance with their flowers and rainbows. This can work if it is done deliberately and by proper use of narrative tools and structures, but neither can be found at Blizzard.

Btw, you don't need to throw in an @ for me if you already quoted my post. Quotation already notifies me.

- - - Updated - - -

i don't get blizz's obsession with pruning so much, xpacs should always add something new for your class. leveling is awful when you just lose things on top of the moronic GCD change.

Their obsession with that is simply due to design reasons. The maintenance effort of WoW is fairly high, especially if you need to support alot of old things which add complexity. Every time they rebalance things or add new stuff to classes they add more complexity and in software development you usually try to keep these things on the low to improve maintainability. The thing is, WoW is still a game and an RPG (somewhat) at that. Constantly losing things is just not reconcilable with the basic idea of RPGs where your character constantly grows. There is also something to be said about WoW's gameplay and system being over-engineered to the n-th degree, but that would lead too far down the rabithole.

[Shakana]

The problem is that Blizzard always tried to do 2 things with the Horde since they started WoW: On one hand they want them to be the noble savages, the underdogs. On the other hand they also want the horde to be a cheap warhammer orc knock-off that runns of testosterone for the guys which are insecure about their masculinity. The issue here is that WoW is not swotor where every character has their own story choices. On the contrary, everyone is railroaded by the overall plot, so either the noble savages are forced to pretend they went temporarily insane and just happily slaughtered children or the guys that think orcs should rape and pillage every race are forced to work alongside the "evil" pansies of the alliance with their flowers and rainbows. This can work if it is done deliberately and by proper use of narrative tools and structures, but neither can be found at Blizzard.

Btw, you don't need to throw in an @ for me if you already quoted my post. Quotation already notifies me.

lmao, i didn't pay attention about the @, i'm kinda used to @ everyone even on discord. Apologies, just habit. Well, fortunately i have no insecurity with my masculinity because i'm a female. Lol So that being said, what you think blizzard is trying to accomplish with all this as an end? Where do you think they are going with this story?

[Zantos]

Classes in BFA were a huge mistake. Massive. The artifacts made some classes unique and playable. Much more then that, Fun. DH got wrecked by the loss of the artifact. Other classes lost utility or even the ability to be used. Artifacts should have stayed and been expanded upon and improved

[Powerogue]

They really destroyed outlaw rogues, which I was really enjoying in Legion, by gutting their class flavor abilities and most powerful and central DPS cooldown. I don't care if their sustained DPS on the meters is fine, it's not fun to play anymore, and particularly made me completely helpless in PvP.

Monks still seem fine, but it hurts me deeply to abandon my main.

I'm aware this has happened a lot before, and I'd say out of all the expansions to do this, the one after the one that got me to make a crapton of level capped alts was the best time to ruin my main. >.<

The biggest mistake was still the azerite system though. Making it a gamble of whether you'll use or chuck that heavy ilevel upgrade azerite piece purely due to the traits, and by far the worst part, making it feel like you're getting weaker from the "upgrade" because you gain dps (that scaling counters entirely) but lose a powerful survivability trait (that scaling will now punish you for heavily) or can't even use half the traits because you don't have the azerite level for it (less of an issue now.)

Legion: I gradually felt stronger as I upgraded my character. I worked towards long term goals like the Mage Tower.
BFA: I gradually felt as strong or weaker as I "upgraded" my character. No mage tower, and gave up on the brawler's guild for now out of frustration with the cruddy questline (whose idea was it to time gate the group brawls?)

[Watchers]

Im buying next exp instant, artifacts and glorius classes, u will see, they always learn xD

[Shakana]

The thing is, WoW is still a game and an RPG (somewhat) at that. Constantly losing things is just not reconcilable with the basic idea of RPGs where your character constantly grows. There is also something to be said about WoW's gameplay and system being over-engineered to the n-th degree, but that would lead too far down the rabithole.

Yes, yes and yes! Classes don't need to be changed so much, it kills the mood and kills the idea of the character growing. This expansion is the worse for me when we talk about classes, i don't feel the "growing" i feel "downgrading". I'm going ahead to sleep, you have a good night! "Light be with you!" lol

[Trumpcat]

I would say yes. Azerite is terrible because it fails to improve the underlying boring and stiff classes.

If we had great classes that make you just log and use them with nice new abilities, large selection of talents and sense of progression, I wouldn't care about Azerite because underlying is my fun class and the Azerite will be just some extra fluff.

Instead we got terrible class design and we jumped at Azerite hoping it will deliver the enrichment classes lack and which Artifacts somewhat brought.

Not to mention the abysmal balance disparity between all specs in all roles. Balance can never be perfect, but the job they did in BfA is incredibly bad, we haven't had such enormous differences in viability in years. And we are now 8.1.5 with barely any address of the issue.

Every RPG out there today has better, more varied and fun to use and fun to look at (and hear) abilities/spells than WoW. I don't know what Blizzard's "focus on development" is doing for WoW, but it better be something great for the classes in the next expansion or I'm just going to turn the milking valve down, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who is letting BfA pass, but not planning to stay for more of the same.

[Cosmic Janitor]

lmao, i didn't pay attention about the @, i'm kinda used to @ everyone even on discord. Apologies, just habit. Well, fortunately i have no insecurity with my masculinity because i'm a female. Lol So that being said, what you think blizzard is trying to accomplish with all this as an end? Where do you think they are going with this story?

Well it's not everyone, though I just noticed this trend even more since I started playing both sides actively in Legion after I pretty much only played Horde seriously since 2005.

Anyway, I doubt anyone is currently sure about the goal or the overall direction. Some signs lead to them maybe wanting to resolve the larger faction divide, but to do that they would have needed to bring both factions down to their knees which is currently a rather wide leap in logic from the alliance winning the war "in the forseeable future". After teldrassil there is also no reconcilliation possible without astonishing mental gymnastics. We literally teemed up together to defeat the Legion, and yet somehow we ended up in BfA and everyone was okay with it for some reason. Like wtf? Is the DM on shrooms?

Another option is that they want to increase the faction divide and cement it in place, but then we are left wondering again why the alliance doesn't dismantle the horde once and for all after they somehow dethrone Sylvanas. Even if Thrall came back, there is no sensible way to just handwave all the shit the horde has done under Sylvanas.

One last option is that they actually prepare a major bang and pull another cataclysm or even true doomsday scenario to force a hard reset of the status quo. While I could see it from a story perspective, the truth is that we are still playing a game that someone needs to program and the amount of changes neccessary for this seem just overwhelmingly large as a task for the short development cycles that WoW now has.

There are probably some more, but if the past has taught us anything then it's that even after strong hints and predictions about the future direction Blizzard likes to do something completely random and unrelated.. expansions Like WoD and MoP are testament to that, heck even the change over from WoD to legion was weird to say the least. In the end they will just make happen whatever they want their next expansion to be. Looking for rhyme or reason here is futile imho.

[Niwes]

When we create a character, we need to choose a class. If that class doesn't fit you, you just simply feel like not playing.

When a class is not good as it used to be, we lack of interest for the game.

When a class has it's own and unique aspects, a unique extra gear ability, a unique artifact weapon, we feel good.
We feel powerful. We feel inspired to play because we have a great synergy between us and the class we choose to play as our main.

Even when we create alts. We just play them for the sake of it. To try something new, to have more professions, to farm something.
Sometimes you like an alt so much that you even consider it your "main-alt". Because the gameplay on that alt flourish within you, it's fun, enjoyable.

Sometimes, even makes you betray your main for that fun that your alt provides you and be your new main.

Saying the class changes doesn't matter on this game and it's not a problem, it's wrong in so many ways. The game content can be great, the lore can be great, but if our classes are not feeling good to play, you might not see it now but you'll see it later, it will make you feel bad because you can't have those glorious days you had before. Where you saw yourself being useful with your class and trying to role to a different alt class that is going currently better than your main. If your class for example, is a warlock that is good to play on a spec but you don't like and you can't just change for the sake of others because you simply don't like the playstyle, then you'll feel your only purpose to be on a raid is to get summons and give them cookies, passing all raid trying to adapt and the more you play, the less you want to raid with it.

Legion had a whole expansion dedicated to the uniqueness of the classes. We loved this, we invested time, we did the solo mage tower challenge content as well to unlock another appearances. Mage tower was a pain but it was fantastic. I had the most rage quits in my entire life doing Mage Tower when it showed up and had about 100+ wipes, almost seemed like a raid, but i had no help and no healer, so i really had to know my class to do it right.

The uniqueness of a class in BfA is so unimportant that even the tier sets no longer exists. You can even be the best player in the world, but without your class not been given much attention just makes the whole game dull. It doesn't help the expansion premise is a mess.

Now, i'm not saying that in Legion all classes were great and in all aspects of it were crazy perfect (Survival hunter for example, no one wanted to play it in Legion) but it gave us so much fun and BfA lacks giving us that. Our class/spec artifact weapon gave us a new ability that we grown used to. This was the first thing as a demon hunter that made me sad, seeing fury of illidari going. All classes had this particular ability that instead of being turned into a skill, it got turned into a talent or just completely disappeared. Dks got their Sindragosa's Fury turned into a talent. Do you see? So many things got lost in the process for this expansion. I can't just pretend anymore this doesn't affect me AND i don't think i'm the only one but for sure many people say it's not important, think again. I think the only true and big changes went for Shadow priests and Demonology warlocks that were basically dead in Legion.

i agree to nearly every thing. you already got me. and then you pushed out that last statement about shadow priests.

are you stoned ? that spec that is one of 2-3 (together with ele) specs, that were promised to get an overhaul later, cause of lack of time, while the overhaul never happened ? instead they just tuned much dmg into the spec, so ppl shout up. the spec has still aoe vs cleave problems. the spec has still ambivalent behaviour problems. the spec has still identity and niche problems. the spec has still scalability problems. and still talent problems. and i even do not play shadow in this xpac! i mean, serious, every spec has his own problems and oppinions, and every player whines about his spec. but you seriously call shadow as the well working class outcoming from legion to bfa ?

ARE YOU FREAKIN STONED ???

[PaladinBash]

It absolutely is. Some melee specs like Fury or Enhance, regardless of their numbers, feel amazing and smooth with lots of procs, synergy and fun interaction with their azerite traits. You play those and then you play Ret and tell me it's fun or well designed. It just isn't and it's no longer just the usual "world ends, Ret also nerfed 10%" thing that happens every patch. This is a systematic thing they will never fix because they design specs to have very big weaknesses and Ret has extremely annoying and unpleasant ones. This is a fucking terrible way to design something. It's never mitigated except in the exceptionally rare cases that Ret actually, somehow, does a lot of damage and that is immediately slammed into the dirt because people get buttmad that Ret wins.

For real though, they design a spec, ON PURPOSE, to be slower than anyone else but not as tanky as the other slow specs (or even some of the fast ones), to have both a simple rotation AND a slow one (rather than a fast-paced button mashy one or an involved one) as well as be both cooldown-reliant but not even have stronger burst than classes with sustained damage. All on a melee spec with all the problems of a melee without gap closing, mobility or good cleave. All of this is deliberate by design and considered the goal long before you even take into account azerite traits, gear scaling (which isn't kind to Ret) and now, Essences.

The Azerite traits you guys complain bitterly about were, accidentally I am sure, added in a while ago to fix some of Ret's glaring problems. Naturally, of course, they were massively and repeatedly nerfed to still be mandatory but also incredibly weak. I am sure there will be new ones that do the same. Essences, likewise, made Ret feel absolutely fucking incredible for the first day but because they made Ret strong and fun, they were nerfed into oblivion, especially for Ret. So what if they make everyone strong? You people say "if everyone is strong, nobody is strong" because you guys are ALREADY strong. You lose something from that and Ret gains something from it. Naturally, Ret isn't allowed to win or be good so because of the glorious perfect class design, the good Essences are killed off right away, dooming Ret because it would have made the spec fun to play at the expense of other classes not feeling better than everyone else. That's all that happens in a world where everyone is strong. Sure, there might have been a spec or two that suffered but it wouldn't have been mine that time so it's an acceptable loss. I'm going to guess it was a mage or warlock, possibly a rogue, that didn't scale well with the good Essences and complained. Blizzard cares when they get shit on.

[Niwes]

@Topic itself:

a lot of specs just feel lame, empty, not well rounded, clunky (yeah, i said it), unfinished, etc.

but not all.

fury warrior, frost mage, balance druid, some heal specs, some tank specs, etc. feel well rounded and working. at least the internet reflects that imo. specs like ret (ppl say its boring and slow and i feel the same), some rogue specs, SP (see above, but boom), Ele (boring but boom), MM, WW, etc feel terrible boring, slow, clunky or unfinished.

so, its not all and everything bad, class wise in BfA.

that said:

the most bad thing that happened, was the endless pruning without thinking wisely. MoP was the last golden age class wise. WoD brought as horrible pruning. they first said they wanna just remove redundant stuff and useless utility. but instead half the classes were gimped in WoD. 40% of specs were ok, but 60% were horrible pruned to the ground. a lot of ppl then were pissed and blizz realized they must offer more gameplay changing aspects and more (optional) complexity to the classes and their mechanics.

so legion brought clear base behaviours of classes with no brainer passive talents or complexity improvement talents. alongside that they introduced a lot of mechanics via legedndaries, to guarantee difference, complexity and versatility of specs. classes per default were simple and flat, but supported by the right talents, AW, and legendaries, they become good classes. that worked very well.

but then came BfA. they deleted the legendary aspects of the classes, tried to bake some of it halfassed into talents, straighten the whole stuff and call it a day. they simply just putted not much effort and quality into it. this is the reason why some specs are very well in BfA and a lot of specs are garbage. they just not invested much into the transission from having AWs and legendaries to having none of it. they just tried to get it simply working, without too much investment.

and here we are.

so, whats the problem and how to fix it ?

blizz should build up all classes to work straight without game mechanics for 80% of their purpose. aoe and ST output, talents, passives and actives... all that should work well rounded out of the box and build the base core functionality and identity of the spec. with easy and complex variants, based on talenting. on top of that, to fine granulate and to roughing the edges, they can put game mechanics like legendaries or azerite stuff or whatever.

the result of this will be well working fun classes, that can be played base level plus passives for 85-90% dps or base level plus improved complexity for 100% dps, while the classes not run into scaling problems or „this spec isnt working well until legendary x or 3 azerite traits y“.

but you have to change base stuff at a lot of specs and you have to invest time and money. and foremost realize how important well rounded fun classes are for the players.

at the moment i am not sure is at this point. they understand the importance maybe now. but i think they still not wanna pay for the investment it needs.

[wombinator04]

Pretty much every class is for the worse in BFA, I prefer every class the way they were in Legion. It has destroyed my interest in WoW, I play a lot less now because of it. The azerite is almost as bad, but it barely effects the core gameplay of each class, so meh class changes did more damage.

[Shakana]

We literally teemed up together to defeat the Legion, and yet somehow we ended up in BfA and everyone was okay with it for some reason. Like wtf? Is the DM on shrooms?

Couldn't resist but see what you said you make me laugh really easy with stuff like "DM on shrooms" xD

There are probably some more, but if the past has taught us anything then it's that even after strong hints and predictions about the future direction Blizzard likes to do something completely random and unrelated.. expansions Like WoD and MoP are testament to that, heck even the change over from WoD to legion was weird to say the least. In the end they will just make happen whatever they want their next expansion to be. Looking for rhyme or reason here is futile imho.

WoD actually made sense bringing Legion because Draenor is how Outland was before the Burning Crusade, to show you what the Legion has done to that place. The events in Draenor showed how Legion started to take over Outland as we know now. Then the Legion was back and they add one of my most expected Hero Classes, Demon Hunter, i can't even start to begin with how much i waited for this for years.

A lot of things about BfA should have been placed in WoD and MoP and not after Legion. Let's say that the old Gods theme makes sense but not the faction wars. And i thought we would get a proper faction war at least but it's just.... *inserts bad word*

It's obvious that it's not only about Horde and Alliance.
Funny that sargueras stabbing the sword in Kalimdor within the time he had, had to be silithus where C'thun is. What brings me a big yikes is the pressure into thinking that if the world soul wakes up and we have to abandon our world. Oh boi. And N'zoth's voice... so much chills. Battle for Azeroth when i remove the faction wars makes me feel so much more comfortable with the expansion. I've been waiting for this so long, Queen Azshara and N'zoth. Some might not understand why but i love this, Queen Azshara in person, she was once a good queen and since n'zoth influenced her and twisted her to it's will that she is not the same Queen Azshara and she is so creepy now. I can't wait for her model in front of my own face in raid.

It's like how you said, we just JOINED forces in Legion, are they on Shrooms? lol And for what all this, to make us feel we are in a great war? That didn't took even much patches for the horde to be shattered. "Alliances forged and broken, we have forgotten what makes us strong" the cinematic fails promoting faction war too much, Saurfang is like AHHHHH when she yells for the horde even, that she doesn't give a damn about besides having power. It's just that, promoting, it's not even how we saw in the cinematic, Sylvanas don't have honor, this ain't even a faction war, seems just Sylvanas being a sassy bish. Ahh, i don't know what to think anymore, this 2 horde factions confuses my feelings. Damn you blizzard.

[Cosmic Janitor]

but not all.

fury warrior, frost mage, balance druid, some heal specs, some tank specs, etc. feel well rounded and working. at least the internet reflects that imo.

In regards to that I personally think that is currently the case because everyone and their mother is playing glacial spike which gives the spec even an ounce of depth. Without that all you would be doing is fishing for procs with frost bolt spam. If Blizzard dares to change that balance tomorrow then the spec is down the toilet and another entry into the list of borked specs.

Another one of these cases for example is unholy. The spec's AoE feels feels great if you pick the right talents and synergies, but once you dare to change away from that the spec suddenly is quite awful imho. Festering wounds not contributing anything to AoE is just awkward, even though we finally have an AoE RP dump, it's still relegated to a talent choice that locks you out of other things, since you have to choose between something so basic as an RP dump or passive gameplay enhancing talents.

These two examples show imho one of the issues we have with hasty change in late BfA development when they suddenly tried to make everything work. Alot of the talent choices don't feel like options, they feel mandatory and when you can't pick them you are punished with something that just feels incomplete. This also goes hand in hand with the half assed implementation of "legion core abilities" that displaced other talents or lock you out of others. The fact that they fudged this because they absolutely refused to add another talent row is still baffling to me.

[Shakana]

i agree to nearly every thing. you already got me. and then you pushed out that last statement about shadow priests.

are you stoned ? that spec that is one of 2-3 (together with ele) specs, that were promised to get an overhaul later, cause of lack of time, while the overhaul never happened ? instead they just tuned much dmg into the spec, so ppl shout up. the spec has still aoe vs cleave problems. the spec has still ambivalent behaviour problems. the spec has still identity and niche problems. the spec has still scalability problems. and still talent problems. and i even do not play shadow in this xpac! i mean, serious, every spec has his own problems and oppinions, and every player whines about his spec. but you seriously call shadow as the well working class outcoming from legion to bfa ?

ARE YOU FREAKIN STONED ???

First of all, why you're yelling? Chill the fuck down, thanks? And second, priest had a lot stuff back that they lost in Legion, the whole "being in void form the more as possible" brought them a clunky playstyle and as well mind sear coming back is a big relief. Spriest couldn't even do a proper m+ because how bad they were. Did you even played Spriest? They were the last dps class people wanted in a m+. And don't even get me started on AoE of Spriest in Legion. Aoe even a Holy Priest with their holy nova would outdps the dps spec in AoE. As i said, don't even get me started and if you never played Spriest you will understand this even less. At least now the whole insanity with mind sear and even Power Word: Fortitude coming back makes Spriest better to play but still not satisfying enough and yes all classes have their flaws and mostly "spec flaws" and that's why i am making this thread.

[Reiry]

I feel like there are three legitimate contenders for worst mistake of BfA:

A) Class Design: I think Azerite and loss of artifacts should be considered part of this as the base classes were never meant to stand alone.

B) New Features: It's clear Blizzard spent a ton of resources on islands and warfronts and there just not fun. Perhaps if they had spent those resources developing something players liked more the expansion would be better.

C) Story

[Niwes]

In regards to that I personally think that is currently the case because everyone and their mother is playing glacial spike which gives the spec even an ounce of depth. Without that all you would be doing is fishing for procs with frost bolt spam. If Blizzard dares to change that balance tomorrow then the spec is down the toilet and another entry into the list of borked specs.

Another one of these cases for example is unholy. The spec's AoE feels feels great if you pick the right talents and synergies, but once you dare to change away from that the spec suddenly is quite awful imho. Festering wounds not contributing anything to AoE is just awkward, even though we finally have an AoE RP dump, it's still relegated to a talent choice that locks you out of other things, since you have to choose between something so basic as an RP dump or passive gameplay enhancing talents.

These two examples show imho one of the issues we have with hasty change in late BfA development when they suddenly tried to make everything work. Alot of the talent choices don't feel like options, they feel mandatory and when you can't pick them you are punished with something that just feels incomplete. This also goes hand in hand with the half assed implementation of "legion core abilities" that displaced other talents or lock you out of others. The fact that they fudged this because they absolutely refused to add another talent row is still baffling to me.

this shows how subjective „good classes“ are. frost, even (or better foremost) without GS seems totally fine to me. also i had heard not much „from the community“ that frost sucks (what is a very vague base to argument, even when you play/played that much classes and read that much wow interwebz stuff like me). even when GS was not mandatory.

but idk. its hard to clearly pull personal oppinion, bad class design, and community opinnion out of this mix. over all there will be a lot of truth when it comes down to „BfA has a lot of bad class design“ alongside but with a lot of stuff that is highly subjective.

so, idk ...

[AmazonDruid]

In my opinion, the biggest mistake was, and will always be the Azerite handling.

I could deal with Azerite Gear. But Guardian Druid is awful boring useless and extremely weak. I just gave up on this expansion. I'm unsubscribed, My time has run out and I'm not even feeling like leveling alts like I used to do in bad expansions like WoD. All classes are Boring, GCD-slow, with very few baseline skills and a tard talent tree with no realistic options.

I miss playing this game. I really do. I could care less about story. There are 2 thing that kept me playing this game after 14 years... Class Fantasy/Gameplay and the sensation of fulfillment of getting the BIS peace of gear.

Class gameplay is bad. TF gear threw away any chance of getting the BIS gear and moving to another alt or waiting for the next patch.

It's health for the game in the long run that players reach the highest possible gear and take a break till the next raid is released. That feeling of coming back is preserverd when that happens. It's bad when players are burned out of running stuff to proc TF gear and no TIER GEAR to look up to. Players that leave feel a sense of freedom like nothing else.